Abstract
The enhancement of soil engineering properties with biopolymers has been shown recently as a viable and environmentally benign alternative to cement and chemical stabilization. Interest in biopolymer-treated soil is evident from the upsurge of related research activities in the last five years, most of which have been experimental in nature. However, biopolymers have not yet found their way into engineering practice. One of the reasons for this may be the absence of computational models that would allow engineers to incorporate biopolymer-treated soil into their designs. Therefore, the main goal of this study is to numerically capture a macroscopic stress-strain response and investigate the effect of biopolymers on the onset of strain localization. Several diagnostic strain-localization analyses were conducted, thus providing strain and stress levels at the onset of strain localization, along with the orientations of the deformation band. Several unconfined compression and triaxial tests on the plain and biopolymer-treated soils were modeled. Results showed that biopolymers significantly improved the mechanical behavior of the soil and affected the onset of strain localization. The numerical results were confirmed by the digital image analysis of the unconfined compression tests. Digital image processing successfully captured high strain concentrations, which tended to occur close to the peak stress.
Highlights
The analyses presented allowed an improved characterization of the biopolymer effect on the failure initiation by providing the stress and strain levels at the onset of strain localization, as well as the orientations of the accompanying discontinuities and corresponding strainlocalization modes
Even though the peak stress of the silty sand increased with the addition of 1% Guar gum (GG), the OSL occurred at the lower strain level for 1% GG
Thereason reason for for this this behavior behavior is is at the fact fact that that the the onset onset of of strain strainlocalization localizationdepends dependson onthe theyield yieldstress stress and andthe thehardening hardening the response. These results indicate that the biopolymer-treated soil had a more brittle response
Summary
Due to the rapid urbanization of cities and the growth of the human population, soil-improvement methods are of increasing importance because of the need to construct on the soft and complicated ground in very adverse and hostile surroundings [1–4]. The primary method that is conventionally applied to enhance the engineering properties of the soil is chemical treatment, and one of the most commonly used chemical-stabilization agents is cement. Even though it is effective and cost-efficient, cement has several adverse effects on the environment. It can initiate the formation of heat islands, contaminate underground water, eradicate vegetation, prevent vegetation growth, etc
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